Yesterday we saw
what can happen when you put faith and reason in opposition to each other when
trying to decide whether other people are guilty, guilty, guilty . . . or just
different from you in things that don’t really matter . . . such as how much
money they do or don’t have.
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| Rich people's hell, according to the poor. |
Specifically, we
looked at the idea that a passage in the New Testament should be understood as
meaning that “the rich” (as defined by whoever is condemning “the rich”) are
somehow inherently different from everyone else, and are damned to hell for all
eternity, do not pass Purgatory, do not collect two hundred years indulgence.
Two can play at
that game, however. Assuming we accept
the Bible as true, we can point out that the verse presented as “proving” that
the rich are inherently different is usually taken out of context. If we want to know “what Jesus really meant,”
we have to read the entire passage:
And again I say unto you, It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to
enter into the kingdom of God. When his
disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be
saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible;
but with God all things are possible. (Matt. 19:24-26.)
Here’s where a
little genuine Bible study — and a lot of common sense — comes in handy. We have to know, for example, that in Jesus’s
day, for both Jews and pagans, the rich were seen as favored by God or the
gods.
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| Sanctimonious, self-righteous people's hell according to the rich. |
For the Jews, of
course, this just meant that the rich had more duties, especially to the
poor. More had been given to the rich,
so more was expected. Even pagans had
this idea. Various pagan myths tell of
gods visiting earth, rewarding virtue, but coming down like a ton of bricks on
the rich who didn’t fulfill their responsibilities to the poor. Those that didn’t? Just wait — the gods will punish you in the
next life. We can’t punish you, but God or the gods will.
This did not
change the fact that for many people, Jews and non-Jews, wealth was seen as a
sign of God’s/the gods special favor, and a pretty good indication that someone
was of the elect and G/god’s’ Special Friend, however a culture or faith
understood that concept. Yet here is
Jesus saying that these presumably favored individuals are going to have a
tough time getting into heaven, possibly even tougher than the rest of us
ordinary schmoes.
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| What we really know about God's judgments. |
This rocks the
Apostles back on their collective heels.
“Say what? But,” they say (in exceeding amazement), “who
then can be saved? If those whom we believe to be Specially Favored
are getting it in neck (or the eye of a needle), what kind of chance do the rest of us have? We’re screwed!” (An ancient Hebrew term meaning fercockt.)
“Not so,” Jesus
reassures them. “With men this is
impossible; but with God all things
are possible.”
Even
non-Christians can accept this
logic. It’s not that the rich are
inherently sinful or anything else, but neither are they any better! Jesus’s point was not that the rich are worse than the rest of us. It was that the rich aren’t any better than the rest of us.
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| "I'm human, therefore, I'm human." |
All human beings
are as human, and are human in the same way as every other human. The only reason Aristotle wouldn’t agree with
that statement is because he made his own error about human beings in order to
rationalize slavery, i.e., some
people are not fully human, or human in the same way as other humans, while
some aren’t human at all . . . and thereby contradicted his own principle of
reason.
Thus, if even
the rich are going to have a tough time getting into heaven, what is to be
done? According to Jesus, “With God, all
things are possible.” Do the best you
can, and leave the rest up to God. And
(by the way), don’t go putting yourself in the place of God, and start judging
either the rich or the poor according
to your principles — that’s not “leaving it up to God.”
So — what has
this got to do with the Just Third Way?
Plenty, if we
stop to think about it — and we’ll get to that tomorrow.
#30#
